Expectations vs. Goals

While we’re on the subject of performance expectations, let’s draw a clear line between expectations and goals. Expectations are what you need your employees to be doing right now, and goals are what they want to be doing down the road. You want your employees to have goals, and in many cases, you can create goals for your employee that line up with positions/roles they want to grow into. This will be particularly important for the more junior members of your team—giving them concrete steps to take will help them grow into their successive positions. Not only is this good for them, it’s good for you as their manager—you begin to “shape” the team to take on missing or weak skills, which in turn increases your team’s ability to do the current work and/or take on new kinds of work.

We’ll talk more about goals in the “The Development of Talent” chapter later in the course. For now, just keep in mind that an employee’s goals are not necessarily the same as the expectations by which you’ll measure their performance. Ideally, these will line up well, but they serve different purposes and conflating the two can be a source of frustration for everyone involved.